Half Day Retreat From Surviving to Thriving: A Nervous System Rebalancing

Reclaim Your Peace & Power--Move from Surviving to Thriving

Join us for a transformative half-day retreat designed to help you reconnect with your soul-self. This event draws on additional practices you can add to what we featured in our previous retreat days, although not required that you attended prevoiusly. Through guided meditation, light movement, sound healing, and yoga nidra, you’ll release stuck energy, restore balance to your nervous system, and find deep relaxation. Let go of stress, trauma, and grief, and step forward into a renewed sense of peace, clarity, and resilience. Following our grounding dinner, Heather will lead us through a fire ceremony. Embrace your healing journey—your best self is waiting.

Trauma, stress, and grief can leave us feeling overwhelmed, often pushing us into survival mode. We do what we must to get through each day, but in doing so, we can lose touch with the essence of who we are. The longer we remain in this survival state, the harder it becomes to show up as our best selves. We may become irritable, disconnected, or even apathetic, while our emotional responses—anger, sadness, or frustration—become more intense. Over time, the daily routine may mask the deeper sense of ourselves, and we might lose connection with our soul.

In moments like these, it can take a guide to help us find our way back to ourselves.

This half-day workshop offers a supportive space for healing and reconnection. Through guided meditation & movement, sound healing, and yoga nidra, participants will have the opportunity to release the stuck energies that keep them locked in survival mode. Sound healing will use the power of vibrations to soothe and rebalance the body’s energy, while yoga nidra—a deep, restorative practice—will guide you into a state of profound relaxation and renewal. The day concludes with optional fire ceremony, which is a mindful and intentional process of acknowledging what no longer serves us. Then, through the transformational nature of fire, we are able to transmute the lessons and make an intention for moving forward with this innerstanding. The day retreat coincides with All-Soul's Day.

All Soul’s Day is traditionally a time to honor the departed, reflect on mortality, and offer prayers or remembrance for those who have passed. In many cultures (especially those influenced by Catholic, Celtic, and Indigenous traditions), it’s also a liminal day — a threshold between the physical and spiritual, the past and the future.

The theme, "From Surviving to Thriving," speaks directly to this passage from one state of being to another. It echoes the transition from:

• Fear to safety
• Grief to gratitude
• Burnout to balance
• Numbness to aliveness

This retreat offers a sacred container for you to release old emotional residue, recalibrate your nervous systems, and reclaim vitality — much like the soul journeys onward after death, free of earthly burdens.

Fire is an ancient symbol of transformation, purification, and connection to spirit. On All Soul’s Day, fire is often used in candles, hearths, and rituals to:

• Light the way for souls
• Burn offerings or intentions
• Transmute grief, fear, and shadow into light and renewal

In your retreat, the fire ceremony becomes a central ritual that mirrors this ancient practice. It allows you to:

• Release survival-based patterns, stress, and trauma
• Honor what you are ready to let go (including past versions of yourself)
• Invoke new life, resilience, and inner thriving

November 1st is also a time of thinning veils, when ancestral wisdom is more accessible and inner healing work is more potent. Nervous system regulation — through breath, movement, stillness, and safe somatic connection — can help participants:

• Come home to yourself in a season that invites reflection
• Feel more resourced and connected to the earth, the present moment, and your lineage
• Step into a new cycle — not just coping, but thriving with embodied awareness

On this sacred threshold of All Soul’s Day, gather in ceremony and community to honor what has been, gently release what no longer serves, and root yourself in resilience. Through somatic practices and a fire ceremony, we will rebalance the nervous system, transforming survival patterns into embodied peace and purpose. Step into the season of remembrance and renewal — not just surviving, but truly thriving.

Here, we won’t aim to return to who you were, but to move forward to who you’ve become—a person who has experienced, healed, and transformed.

The retreat is designed to help restore balance to the energetic patterns disrupted by intense emotions. Together, we will cultivate self-supportive practices that empower us to move forward with greater resilience. By the end of the session, participants will leave with tools and techniques to self-regulate, helping them navigate the complex emotional and energetic landscapes of life with more peace, clarity, and nervous system resilience.

Please arrive by 12 to settle in, ground, have a cuppa tea

12:30 Introductions

1st Session -- Movement Activity (Gentle)

2nd Session -- Meditation (Heather leading both 1st & 2nd sessions)

3rd Session -- Yoga Nidra & Healing with Dawn

Around 5:30 Closing & Dinner (plant based, grounding nourishment provided for you)

7:30/8pm -- Fire Ceremony

The practices we will utilize for this half day retreat are not only transformative for the mind and spirit but are also deeply nourishing for the nervous system. By engaging in these healing modalities, participants will activate the parasympathetic nervous system, helping to shift from a state of fight-or-flight into deep rest and rejuvenation. The calming effects of sound healing and the restorative power of yoga nidra help reduce stress, lower cortisol levels, and promote a sense of inner calm and balance. This, in turn, supports the body’s natural ability to heal, recover, and reconnect with its inner sense of safety and peace.

Heather Wright is a Massage, Energy and Shamanic Healing Practitioner with over 16 years of experience in the healing arts. She owns Soul Body Connection in Asheville. Her heart centered guided imagery meditations are designed to support participants in balancing their energy. With the use of breath and movement, we will open space for the natural flow of emotional, spiritual, and physical healing.

You can learn more about Heather and her work at https://www.soulbodyconnection.net/

Dawn Sagonias is a Sound Healing Practitioner, Yoga Nidra facilitator, and has been in the field of Well-Being for 25 years, with massage therapy, energy work, sound healing, yoga, meditation, and hospitality. She runs the Inner Wolf Retreat Space and the Sound Nest, two sound healing studios in the Asheville area. Her sound healing sessions focus on relaxing the brain to the theta brainwave state for the whole hour of sound, and supports physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual support. She has facilitated sound healing sessions since 2015, including leading a weekly grief support sound healing for 4 years, and her sessions have helped many people integrate life’s plot twists. You can learn more about Dawn and her work at www.soundofanewdawn.com and www.innerwolfretreatspace.com

Also check out other Health & Wellness events in Mars Hill, Arts events in Mars Hill, Workshops in Mars Hill.